The point of The Australian Financial Review’s Nuclear Option series is not to insist that Australia should belatedly embrace nuclear power as part of the net zero energy transition. Nor is it to claim that nuclear energy in Australia will stack up economically.

The point is to report how other countries such as Canada, the US, Britain and Japan are incorporating small modular reactors (SMR) into net zero energy transitions, so that nuclear power can back up intermittent renewables, as part of the enormous challenge of decarbonising the global economy and minimising climate change while keeping the lights on.